snap

Dear Amazon,

Thank you for selling me a new camera battery.

Now, hurry up and ship it.

Regards,

A

spice cakes

Spice cakes are probably the coolest things in the world, and are the closest thing to an open bag of salt and pepper potato chips (aka: crack) to my non-sweet tooth. When made well, they are lightly scented with a balanced blend of spices and are tender to the tooth. When made poorly, they are borderline bitter and please-soak-me-in-milk dense. For the record, I'd like to say: if I made a bitter, dense cake, I would be really disappointed in myself and write a blog all about taking my penance like a woman and eating it anyway.
Again, from Gourmet (RIP), I found a recipe for a spice cake with caramelized pears and maple buttercream frosting. Just saying that whole thing, let alone typing it and, no need to mention, making it, is work. Phew, I'm tired already.
So, what do I do than what I know how to do best? I changed the recipe around. I made the cake batter exactly as it was written, but: caramelized apples instead of pears, used my mini bundt cake pans instead of making 3 8" rounds and doused them with rum syrup I infused with orange zest instead of making the buttercream. I also baked the apples into the bottom of the bundts. Mmm hmmm. Totally.
(those chunks there? apples.)

For caramelized apples:

• 2 1/4 pounds Granny Smith and Gala apples (about 5)
• 1/2 stick unsalted butter
• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons brandy

Caramelize apples:
Peel and core apples, then coarsely chop.
Heat butter in a 12-inch heavy skillet over medium-high heat until foam subsides, then sauté apples, stirring occasionally, until just beginning to brown, 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in sugar, lemon juice, and brandy and cook over high heat, stirring, until juices are deep golden and apples are tender, about 5 minutes.


For spice cake:

• 2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• 2/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 5 large eggs 
  

Preheat oven to 350°F with rack in middle. Butter and flour cake pans.
Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and spices in a large bowl. Stir together milk and vanilla in a small bowl.
Beat butter and sugars with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, 3 to 5 minutes. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. At low speed, mix in flour mixture in 3 batches, alternating with milk mixture (begin and end with flour mixture) and mixing until just combined.
Here, you can either add the apples to the batter or save them as a filler if you choose to make the cakes round. Divide batter among pans, smoothing tops, then rap pans once or twice on counter to eliminate any air bubbles. Bake until pale golden and a wooden pick inserted into center of cakes comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Cool in pans on racks 10 minutes. Run a thin knife around edge of pans, then invert cakes onto racks. Reinvert and cool completely.

For rum syrup:

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup rum
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 1/2 teaspoon orange zest

Place the ingredients in a small saucepan over low heat. Allow to simmer one minute, cover and simmer an additional 3 minutes.
When the cake comes out of the oven, immediately poke holes throughout the bottom with a toothpick or skewer. Brush half of the syrup onto the cake and allow it to cool for 10 minutes. Invert the cake onto a greased cooling rack and poke holes in the top side, then brush it with the remaining syrup. After they cool, you can wrap the cakes and serve them 24 hours later if you like.

I wanted to make a simple icing for them, like a cream cheese gooey mess that would pour over the sides...but I didn't have the ingredients. Not one, tiny smattering of confectioner's sugar in the house. HARUMPH!! But, alone, they were still pretty tasty. Especially with a Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale.

Stay tuned for the next making of this cake...I have some incredibly festive ideas you won't want to miss - especially if they fail as failure makes my writing hilarious.

eat right

The American Dietetic Association has a new website: WOW

It's actually EASY TO FOLLOW AND SLOG THROUGH!! You don't get lost going back and forth and searching for half a(n?) hour for a one sentence answer.

A miracle. A holiday miracle.

...and bring it right here

I just can't seem to get enough baking into my life these days. I like to think it's the weather; the cold is seeping into the small spaces between my knuckles and I long for fireside hot toddys, a warm chocolate brioche and a book I can fall into. (Too bad for me I have no fireplace and don't make brioche. There is a brand new Cambridge main library, though.)
I am unemployed, have actual *time* and, luckily, stumbled upon some work in an actual pie and pastry bakery. So, yeah, even though the icy knife of New England winter is beginning to slice through the outdoors, it is my daily situation that inspires me to oven-hover for hours on end.
I searched my recipe savings account, a mish-mash of newspaper and magazine clippings I keep in a legal file folder, for something fun to bide my time with. There was nothing that really drew me in. I don't know if I am disappointed because the Me who clipped those recipes has never met the Me who is looking at them now or happy because the two Mes have never met. The unemployed, free time Me has never existed before, so I am going to go with happy.
And to keep the emotion on a roll, I get happy when I look through a new cooking magazine (drawn in as if held in a trance of planning and hope kind of happy). Last month's Gourmet (RIP) had a cool article about pumpkin pie alternatives to make for Thanksgiving desserts. A Fig Crostata caught my eye, and the rest of the story follows as this:

Wait. First off, I don' have my new camera battery yet. You will have to view this via my crappy phone pictures, and I apologize for that. But I did take a picture of the picture in the magazine so at least you can see what my final goal was:

 Is that really cheesy? That I went there? Okay, well, sure.

The crust really stood out here, it was almost, if not totally, a butter cookie. Crispy and flaky, it didn't brown as much as I thought it would even though I added sugar on top. I may try egg white next time, too. The filling wasn't too sweet with a good pinch of orange flavor, but not enough to linger too long and overpower the mellow figs. Walnuts were a meaty addition but, to me, biting into a raw walnut might be the closest thing to biting into a tree grub. I don't know if that's a true analogy, but it's what I think of when I bite. I prefer my nuts a little crunchier: next time, toasted. Texturally, it was a thick pudding...perhaps a figgy pudding? A go for Christmas in AZ, I recommend you give it a try.

My comments on the recipe look like this. 

Fig Crostata

Gourmet  | November 2009

by Gina Marie Miraglia Eriquez

For pastry dough:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar plus additional for sprinkling
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 2 large egg yolks
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon cold water

For fig filling:

• 12 ounces soft dried figs (preferably Calmyrna), stemmed and coarsely chopped
• 1 1/4 cups water
• 1 cup fresh orange juice
• 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 3 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon grated orange zest
• 1 1/2 cups walnuts (6 ounces), coarsely chopped

• Equipment: a 9-inch springform pan

• Accompaniment: mascarpone 

Make pastry dough:
Blend together flour, sugar, salt, and butter in a bowl with your fingertips or a pastry blender (or pulse in a food processor) just until mixture resembles coarse meal with some roughly pea-size butter lumps. I like using the food processor, but I can be lazy like that. Add yolks, vanilla, and water and gently stir with a fork (or pulse) until incorporated and dough begins to form large clumps.
Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface and divide into 4 portions. It really looks like cornmeal at this point with a food processored dough, but stick with it; it will come together if you work it. With heel of your hand, smear each portion once or twice in a forward motion to help distribute fat. Gather all dough together (using a pastry scraper if you have one), then divide dough in half and form each half into a 5- to 6-inch disk. Chill, wrapped in plastic wrap, until firm, at least 1 hour.

Make fig filling while dough chills:
Simmer figs, water, orange juice, and brown sugar in a medium saucepan, covered, stirring occasionally, until figs are soft and mixture is reduced to about 2 cups, 15 to 20 minutes. Pulse in a food processor (see how useful food processors can be?) until finely chopped (mixture should not be smooth). Transfer to a large bowl and cool slightly. Stir in butter, eggs, vanilla, zest, and walnuts. The pics actually looked kind of gross, so I didn't add them. Just didn't want you to judge it yet.
Make tart shell:
Preheat oven to 350°F with rack in middle. Generously butter springform pan. Roll out 1 portion of dough between 2 sheets of parchment paper into a 12-inch round (dough will be soft; chill or freeze briefly if it becomes difficult to work with oh, and it will...). Peel off top sheet of parchment and carefully invert dough into pan. (Dough will tear easily but can be patched together with your fingers.) Press dough onto bottom and 1 inch up side of pan, then trim excess. Chill tart shell until ready to assemble crostata

Roll out remaining dough between 2 sheets of parchment paper into a 12-inch round. Peel off top sheet of parchment, then cut dough into 10 (1-inch-wide) strips and slide (still on parchment) onto a tray. Chill until firm, about 10 minutes.
Assemble crostata:
Spread fig filling in shell. Arrange 5 strips of dough 1 inch apart on filling. Arrange remaining 5 strips 1 inch apart across first strips to form a lattice. Trim edges of strips flush with edge of shell. Sprinkle crostata with sugar.
Bake until filling is slightly puffed and pastry is pale golden, about 30 minutes. Cool completely, then remove side of pan. Serve crostata with mascarpone.

Okay, here it was:

I like the soft lighting in this shot. It reminds me of mid-1960's Betty Crocker print advertising that was specifically created to tug at the heartstrings of the country's early adults, reminding them how good it was to go home and visit Mom. Remember how she liked to bake you pie?